Chapter One - The Power

Two generations ago, in a
small New England city, a promising young man of twenty-two lay apparently
at the point of death. On both sides of his house the ancestors were physically
weak, and all save two in a family of nine had already passed from this
life when our record begins. The young man of whom we are speaking was
frail in physique. There seemed to be little power of resistance to withstand
the oncoming of a disease ordinarily accounted fatal as matters go in this
world of allegiance to material things. In type he was spiritually minded
and highly intuitive, inclined to think for himself and exercise rights
of individual initiative. He was zealous in religion, devoted to the church,
eager in fact to prepare himself for the ministry if his health should
permit the completion of his college course. On the side of faith
as conventionally understood
nothing more could indeed have been asked.

He had joined the church at
sixteen with a large
measure of emotional enthusiasm. He regularly attended all services and
was especially zealous in prayer-meeting. He was a Calvinist, however,
in the thorough-going sense of the word. God to him was little more than
a Man seated on a white throne of authority outside the world, a God to
be admired with awesome reverence rather than a Father to be loved. Naturally
our young man, devout as he was, had no idea of the power of divine love
as an indwelling presence to be sought as one might turn to a friend. Christianity
was a doctrine of salvation interpreted as a Baptist of the period understood
it. Salvation as thus conceived by no means included the problems of bodily
weakness and ill-health. Prayer was for certain purposes. The observances
decreed by the church were to be rigidly adhered to, leaving mundane matters
for consideration in their proper place. Among these matters was the question
of disease, and the physicians of the old school had apparently done their
utmost to save this young man.

Then there came from a wholly
unexpected source a marvellous change into this young life.
This change not only meant that
he was rescued from
the abyss of death by spiritual means when material methods had failed,
but that he was given a new impetus and an understanding of life which
enabled him to live on this earth during many years of great usefulness.
It will be worthwhile considering what wrought the change, why it could
be so pronounced in the case of a man emphatically spiritual in type, genuinely
a Christian as the Gospel was then understood.

There came as if heaven-sent
a man whose work among the sick had no place among therepeutic systems
commonly known as scientific. He did not give medicines or drugs. He had
no system of physical treatment. Nor did he even diagnose disease by its
symptoms, or inquire into verdicts pronounced by those competent to make
a diagnosis. He received as patients those whose faith gave them impetus
enough to visit his office or send for him. Without asking questions, he
sat meditatively by his patients to gather whatever impressions might come
intuitively by his own way of seeking such discernment. Having gained his
impression and sought light on the problem before him, he put his mind
through a realization akin to prayer as an act of worship, but more effective
than such prayers
as our young man was wont to hear on Friday evenings at church. He
believed that God
is directly accessible through prayer, yet with additional faith in the
immediate response of the human spirit as potential master of the body.
This definite and practical faith implied the utilizing of healing power
to restore the body through the spirit. Proceeding by his own method, he
ventured to seek help from within when all hope of a cure through conventional
methods had passed. For in his practice with the sick he was not governed
by outward appearances or even by signs which indicate the nearby presence
of death. What signified was the state of a person's spirit and the possibility
of leading a responsive person into the light out of the darkness of threatening
miseries and fears.

Many people were restored to
health by this true believer in the presence of God, some of whom became
active workers when they grasped the principle. The world has since become
familiar with the idea of mental healing, and is quick to arrive at the
conclusion that this is what one means, namely, that by the influence of
one mind on another through "suggestion" changes are wrought
which physical means fail to accomplish. But here our account would end
if this were an adequate explanation. Our reason for telling about the
marvellous result accomplished in this young man's life is found in the
fact that the change was more than victory over
death and the successful staying of a disease presumably fatal. It will
hardly be possible to see the meaning of this profound turning of a young
life from one channel into another if we look at it as a mental cure. The
change was the equivalent of a conversion and much more, if by a conversion
we mean the adoption of a creed which makes of a worldly man a follower
of Christ. For this young man had already given himself to Christ. Strange
to relate, in adopting the teachings of the new therepeutist he renounced
the church as an organization, together with all its observances, also
his desire to become a minister. Yet on the other hand he became more faithfully
a follower of Christ than before.

The apparent paradox is resolved
when we note that the transition was from the Calvinistic deity to faith
in God as immanent, loving, guiding Father, immediate and accessible, in
a sense as intimate as that of our own self-consciousness when aware that
there is an ideal self within us, when we will to have that self become
actual in daily life. It meant the conviction that the true God is already
present in our spirit to uplift and make us free as rapidly as we come
to recognize and respond, admitting the divine life into all parts of our
being. It signified the disclosure of the original gospel of health and
freedom taught
and proved by the Master. Sectarian Christianity no longer existed for
him. He reacted against its limitations as against the faults of medical
science and practice. Yet he did not in any sense cease to believe in Christ
as the true Saviour of the world.

That his was a genuine conversion
in the practical sense of the word was shown by the fact that, once restored
to active service, he began to live by what to him was a new gospel and
to give his time to spreading this gospel in the world. We naturally look
for different signs if we gain this point of view, and we are not surprised
when we find a person somewhat critical of the old order of thought. For
the reaction, in the case of a man who discards theology as a formulated
scheme but retains religion, is in favor of what is spiritually essential.
It is constructive and worthy of being regarded from within. Intellectually
it is critical because the understanding must be clarified. Spiritually
it assimilates all that was best in the type of thought that has been discarded.

Later, our young man was fond
of saying that one must set aside all preconceptions for the time being,
to grasp the new point of view as a "spiritual science." So we
too must neglect for the moment ideas which are familiar and toward which
we strongly incline, if we shall enter sympathetically into a spirit of
truth capable of giving a creative impetus in Christian life. This is not
easy for those who judge by doctrines in contrast with experience disclosing
new fields.

This gospel involved the idea
that Christ is not a Person in the sense in which orthodox believers associate
the Son with the Father in the Trinity. The leading idea was that Christ
was divine wisdom taught and exemplified by the historical personality,
Jesus of Nazareth, whom we begin truly to understand when we make this
discrimination. The extent to which such a distinction is justifiable by
interpretation of the Gospels is a question which we postpone for the time
being. We are now concerned with its practical consequences through belief
in "the light of Christ in the soul," the living Christ near
to the heart of every sincere believer, the divine wisdom and love made
concrete in our needs and aspirations.

Much depends on our prior thought
concerning the human self. If instead of regarding man as "fallen"
or dwelling upon his shortcomings and his sins, pitying him in his miserable
plight and emphasizing the need of supernatural salvation, we hold that
man is by birthright free and sound, yet at first ignorant and in need
of experience which shall make him aware of resident divine powers within
him, we are ready for the
proposition that Christ is the enlightenment needed to awaken man to his
true estate. For man's miseries are unwittingly of his own making, ignorant
that he is a spirit endowed with power in the image and likeness of God.
These miseries belong with man's lesser selfhood when, under bondage to
material sense, he is like one sleeping. Even our young man with all his
Christian zeal was as one in a dream. To awaken him was to give him a different
idea of what it means to be faithful to the Master, to believe in God and
live by the divine wisdom. It was to start from within in the living present,
the divine moment of his true selfhood. It was to concentrate upon what
man is ideally, touched with the fulness of life by the quickening presence
of Christ.

History virtually disappears
from this point of view and one sees the living Christ coming through the
mists with a glad message of light and freedom. Whatever is deemed noblest
and best is already here. This was the real purport of the Gospels, that
we should find the living Christ now. This means an ever-present resource,
for power, for health, for life wherewith to break down barriers which
imprison souls and set them free. It does not mean the exaltation of the
self, as if one claimed for the man of today what the wisest men of the
ages have missed.
It does not mean undue emphasis on inner experience, as if in one's egotism
one attributed all power to finite man. Yet it certainly does mean
an application of ancient truth
which has eluded good
and wise men. It gives everyone, however humble his station, however great
his trouble, opportunity to begin where he is and live by the science which
Jesus taught when summoning men to fulness of being.

The impressive characteristic
of the healer who restored our young man was constructive humility, an
exceptional combination of true receptivity interposing no obstacle and
an affirmativeness reaching beyond what ordinary Christians
venture to claim. This is vastly
different from attributing all
virtue to the finite self. It calls for much more thorough renovation of
one's life than is usually expected by priest or physician, each of whom
ordinarily asks us to reform but half a man. It means taking life
seriously indeed, yet with a
joy, a benefit, a freedom, with powers of service beyond comparison.

Our young man began to reform
the whole man--he
who needed it less in most respects than many men do. Or, rather
the Spirit wrought such regeneration in him. The Spirit summoned him
to live a consistent life in
mind and body. He was still handicapped, with his frail physique and difficult
inheritance. But he began anew to work
on and up. He led a triumphant life of the spirit. That is the great consideration.

Too often we judge a human life
by its failures, by disfigurements and injuries which do not wholly disappear,
by apparent lapses and inconsistencies. We should gain the point of view
of the achieving spirit, taking up one phase of life after another as steadily
as each can be understood and brought into line. The perfect demonstration
will come only when the entire human race is regenerated. No one can truly
know himself in the profounder sense save as a, member of a human family
whose weaknesses and ignorance he shares when he starts on the long road.
No one can begin truly to be free unless he extends a helping hand to fellow
mortals. Indeed, one may begin thus genuinely to serve while struggling
to get on one's feet out of quagmires of inheritance which seem overwhelming.

The spiritual life is a progress,
not a leap. What one claims who adopts Christ as guide, in preference to
sciences and methods which approach man from the outside, is that the wisdom
which proves itself by its works here and now can be carried on to the
perfect demonstration.

Our young man had all the obstacles
he could contend with during years when people were not ready for the truth
he saw. But these were
given him, let us say, not to make light of, not to run away from, but
to face, to call out his courage and his faith, that he might learn the
law of Christ, live by it and help others to live by it. His spirit could
not have begun to be supreme save through obstacles in the flesh and his
environment over which to become triumphant. The turning-point came with
him when he realized that infinite resources of divine love and wisdom
were ready at hand within him.

What we need to do, therefore,
to realize the power of the Spirit in the Christ-consciousness is to discern
the elements or principles which are active in this triumph. For we have
to do with a more enlightened idea of the human spirit, a different view
of health extending into the spiritual life in its fulness, and an interpretation
of healing adapted to the deepest problems of the soul.

We are apt to think when we
believe rightly that the rest will follow, as zealous Christians have thought
all through the ages, with their doctrine of "faith alone." We
are apt to think that it is sufficient to see nearby causes of our unhappiness,
and make some slight change. But a spiritual interpretation of life calls
upon us to trace matters to the end, not stopping with merely remedial
activities.

The finding of the way back
to health is secondary
to the discovery of the kind of life we might have lived had we always
kept close to God, had we drawn upon divine resources, practised divine
wisdom, manifested divine love, outwardly as well as inwardly in spiritual
health. The power of the spirit to keep the way, to live by the
truth, attain the life, is a greater consideration than the power to regain
the way when we have missed it. For Christ is affirmative in us. The Christ
is the true science of right living, and only indirectly the corrective
of our errors. We are bidden to judge by the ideal, the normal, and to
expand our life to its full proportions. We are bidden to find the kingdom
which is within and to live by its law. This the power of the Spirit is
able to accomplish through us. This gives the impetus which makes daily
life a joy in the presence of our friends and our God.